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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 9820165" data-attributes="member: 6988941">The main draws to me are 1) a setting people care about and 2) shared baseline expectations of how things work. I do think those are both double-edged swords, that if anyone is not sufficiently familiar with the franchise you are playing a licensed game for they're in for a world of frustration.One "licensed game" I've played a fair amount of is Star Trek Adventures. People who are excited to join a Star Trek group have probably seen a fair amount of Star Trek, know what a Klingon or a Warp Core is, and know basically how a Star Trek episode is supposed to go. They probably join with the intention of being Starfleet officers jetting around the galaxy solving science mysteries and facing moral conundra, and probably not with the intention of being some sort of murder hobos. A well-designed licensed game (which STA is for the most part, at least at its core) has rules which support the sort of gameplay people interested in the franchise are probably attracted to doing with it, and aren't saddled with too much rules bloat to cover situations players really aren't likely to get into in that franchise.Now there's a variety of tremendous downsides. One that I've implicitly alluded to already is that you should generally organize the group around the game with fans of the licensed property. If you just have your existing group play the licensed game your heart is set on next you probably end up with people who don't know the lore, don't quite get the vibe of what the game is geared towards, and/or aren't particularly excited to do the things the game is built for. My D&D group is currently giving the Cosemere RPG a spin, and while I am digging some of the rules design choices I haven't read the books, probably won't read the books, and am basically just playing it like I would 5e D&D, and that's probably not a huge problem in this case (my character is happy to go along with the group, the game seems to assume pretty D&D-like activities, and it's just a short campaign), but for some licensed games it would be a problem. Another downside is that while some licensed properties (Star Trek, Star Wars) lend themselves to nigh limitless adventures not directly connected to the "main stories" of the franchise, other franchises are really just about one or several narratives. Did any event ever happen in Middle Earth not relating to Morgoth or Sauron and their magical trinkets? Don't players of Avatar all kind of wish their character could be the singular chosen one who can bend all four elements?But the most obnoxious problem with licensed games is most licensors have no respect for the ttrpg craft and just pull licenses as soon as there's more money to be had licensing to someone else. Game companies replacing the game you know with a sequel game you don't want or need and calling it a "new edition" is obnoxious enough, but these days at least they are probably happy to keep selling digital copies of the old game. If the license gets pulled the game might just be disappeared.</blockquote>

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